MPs to investigate Britain's broadband speeds

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The Digital Britain report, published earlier this month, proposed that all homes would have access to broadband speeds of at least 2Mbps by 2012.

Now for a country that has Virgin advertising up to 50Mb via their cable network and O2 advertising up to 20Mb on the existing phone-line network that doesn’t really sound very ambitious. It seems that some MPs may also be thinking just that.

So, MPs who work in the Commons Business and Enterprise Committee are to open an inquiry into broadband speeds in the UK. They will also look into whether the proposed 50p broadband tax is fair or not – the charge would be added monthly to anyone with a fixed telephone line.

Their concern is that by not aiming higher, the UK will fall behind the rest of the world in terms of broadband speeds. This handy chart courtesy of the BBC shows just how far we are behind already:

Even the French are beating us – sacre bleu. Also, South Korea has set a target of a minimum of 1Gbps for all homes. That kind of blows our target out of the water.